The present disclosure relates to the field of software applications for user terminals and provides methods, systems and computer program products for controlling the installation of applications on such terminals.
Application distribution systems may facilitate the distribution of software applications to user terminals. A user may connect to an application portal, such as the Apple® App Store™ or Android™ Marketplace, via their user terminal, whereupon they are presented with a selection of applications available for download and installation. Entitlement to applications may be determined on the basis of whether the user associated with the user terminal has paid for the given application (if necessary). Thus a given user's entitlement to access and download applications is determined on the basis of whether funds have been received for the application. This mechanism does not permit parties such as application providers to control provisioning of applications.
In addition to application provisioning to individual user devices, Application distribution systems may also facilitate bulk distribution of applications. For example, the Apple® B2B App Store™ provides a number of redemption codes for use by individual user devices in downloading of a corresponding application. However, management of redemption codes is cumbersome and error prone.
Enterprises may also maintain their own application distribution systems for distributing applications to user devices connected thereto, in which entitlement to applications is determined on the basis of enterprise provided user or device authentication credentials. However, maintaining enterprise specific application distribution systems is costly. In addition, such enterprise specific application distribution systems may not be compatible with certain devices, such as iPhone®, whose manufacturer insists on controlling application provisioning via their own application distribution systems.
Application distribution systems additionally do not have any mechanisms of managing the persistence of distributed applications, and, as a consequence, enterprises are unable to reuse licenses.
It is an objective of the present disclosure to provide improved methods for controlling the access to applications on user terminals.